Virginia Beach Quaker school weighs relocation

Quakers are known for silent gatherings, but the Virginia Beach Friends School on Laskin Road is anything but quiet when thundering Navy jets drown out teachers and students.

The noise from Oceana Naval Air Station is one of several reasons the school is looking to move 54 years after it was founded by the Quaker congregation next door.

Much about the relocation hasn't been decided, including where in Virginia Beach the new campus will be, the cost of the property and construction, or how much the school would ask a buyer to pay for the existing property.

It is also undecided whether the Virginia Beach Friends Meeting, the neighboring congregation, will move with the school.

School leaders want to buy about 20 acres in Virginia Beach and increase enrollment to as much as 350 students. The existing campus of just more than 7 acres has nearly 200 students in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.

"To have the full breadth of a high school curriculum, we need to grow," said Jon Alden, the departing school head.

The new campus would minimize its ecological impact by using green construction and technology, reflecting Quaker concern for the environment.

"That will not only promote better care of our Earth, but be a learning environment not just for our students but other students," said Lisa Wynkoop, clerk of the school committee.

A new campus also could raise the school's profile within South Hampton Roads' competitive independent school market.

"I do think and hope the visibility of buildings and a new campus will absolutely draw additional attention," Wynkoop said.

As a Quaker school, the entire student body gathers at the adjacent meeting house weekly for 30 minutes of quiet reflective time in the Quaker tradition.

Although instruction includes Quaker studies, a majority of the school's faculty, students and governing committee are not Quaker.

The Virginia Beach meeting, as Quaker congregations are called, began in 1954 in the home of Louise and Bob Wilson.

The school was launched in a rented 4-H building in the North End, then moved into the newly built meeting house, said Louise Wilson, a former head of the school. The school campus was built over subsequent years. It graduated its first high school class about 10 years ago.

Though the school and meeting are independent, they maintain a "care relationship," Wynkoop said.

"We're the largest community outreach of the Virginia Beach meeting. Care means we work together, share property; many people from meeting are on our board," she said.

In the meeting, which has about 100 members, some congregants favor moving with the school while others don't. "The meeting would like the school to have a firmer plan," said Andy Young, who is also a school committee member.

The meeting's final decision could be bittersweet, given the close connections between school and congregation. "We've actually had people say as the analogy that the school has outgrown living at home, and we've become that college graduate ready to go off on our own," Wynkoop said.

The school asked the meeting to move with it but will relocate regardless, school leaders said. "We do recognize the meeting has been our spiritual grounding for 55 years; it is a very important relationship with us," Wynkoop said. But "our first responsibility is to the school."

Steven G. Vegh, (757) 446-2417, steven.vegh@pilotonline.com